A Predator Drone Bombs On Stage, by Zain Khalid

Give it up for your host, everybody! Thanks for supporting live comedy!

Before we get started, let’s hear it for all the brave men and women in the Armed Services I replaced with ruthless efficiency!

How are you folks doing? Good? Do we have any out-of-towners with us tonight? Any Syrian wedding parties in the audience? Seriously. If there are, please keep your hands raised for the duration of my set to avoid losing said hands in a tragic “accident.”

Now, is everyone ready to laugh? Hashtag rhetorical question!

Who has two anti-armor HellFire missiles and thinks porn videos should lose those “Share on Facebook” buttons? This guy! Do my friends really need to know I like watching a hairy mechanic attach external fuel tanks to a buxom MQ-9 Reaper? Whoops, didn’t mean to say that out loud!

Man, it’s hot. Anybody else sweating? Let me take this off…My bad! I totally didn’t mean to flatten the humans in the first row with my giant chrome chassis. To be fair, most of them were looking at their phones. Why buy tickets if you’re not going to pay attention? Can we all agree that they were actually crushed under the weight of their own indifference?

Speaking of websites you shouldn’t visit during a performance, WebMD says I have post-traumatic stress disorder. But come on, do you think I can afford intense psychotherapy? Hashtag not in this economy! Especially not with a dovish Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair who’s obsessed with UN sanctions! You guys know what I’m talking about!

I did that to myself. Political humor can be a double-edged laser-guided warhead.

By a round of applause, who eats sandwiches? Nobody? I don’t on account of my being an unmanned aerial vehicle, and unless the ATM in the lobby is secretly related to Optimus Prime, I’m the only one of those here AM I RIGHT? Forget it, I’ll just assume some of you eat sandwiches. Have you heard what they call people who work at Subway? Sandwich Artists. They’re not artists! John Lennon was an artist. The guy who designed my synthetic aperture radar was an artist. Subway employees are just liberal arts majors with some broke-ass parents! Hashtag inconvenient truth. Shout outs to Albert Arnold Gore Junior!

I feel like I’m rehearsing these jokes in my living room, which, by the way, is the infinite horizon, so maybe you should show some respect.

Huh, that’s weird. The booker is telling me to get off stage. Amy Schumer must have showed up. Time for my closer!

Fellas, don’t you hate how your girl says she doesn’t want drama but always starts some? First she tells you how attracted she is to your weapons of above-average destruction, and then she’s all like, “Why are you perpetuating a war that shouldn’t have started in the first place?” and “How do you know there weren’t any civilians in that village?” She ends up leaving you for some metrosexual Amazon Drone saying, “He’s sensitive. He can provide for us without ruining lives.” What does that even mean? I told her to call me when he steals her skinny jeans. Women who are into medium-altitude long-endurance aircraft systems be crazy!

What was that? No, you’re a hack! Seriously? Do you want everyone to know you spent the last two weeks in rehab? Because I have access to the NSA database, that’s how. What, you live-tweet your breakup with Jessica and I’m supposed to believe you care about privacy? That strikes me as unlikely, Lance Greenberg from 115 Roebling Street Unit 4F, Brooklyn New York 11211. Oh, and you can thank Uncle Mark for that cashew allergy. Or should I say biological father Mark? Hashtag Patriot Act.

Hey, guess what? Fuck this crowd.

ACTIVATE. MISSILE. PYLON.

Ha! You should have seen the looks on all your faces! Also, why would I do that here? I’m an undetectable flying death machine. I’ll kill you while you sleep.

And that’s my time! Goodnight!

Zain Khalid is a comedian and writer living in New York. He has contributed to McSweeney’s, CAFE, The Offing Mag, Splitsider, and other really cool places. He puts his family and air mattress above all else.

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A Predator Drone Bombs On Stage, by Zain Khalid